All 19th-century British colonies had to pay their way, except for Liberia. The British crown extracted payment by planting cash crops. Tea from China was planted in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), coffee from the Andes to Kenya, rubber from the Andes to Malaysia, citrus fruit from Europe to South Africa and cocoa from the Andes to the Gold Coast, now Ghana.

In 1890 the Gold Coast produced no cocoa; by 1914 its output was 80% of the world total. The cost was stopping food production on the most fertile land and creating a disastrous monoculture that denuded the land of nutrients. The previous owners of the land became virtual slaves and the Gold Coast was not a charge on the British exchequer!

To paraphrase Jomo Kenyatta, the British arrived in Africa with the gun and the Bible, while the black man had the land. The black man closed his eyes; when he opened them the white man had the land and the gun and the black man the Bible.Michael GoldLondon

• This article was amended on Friday 17 April 2009. . This has been corrected.The letter above should have attributed to the late Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta the observation that when the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. "They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible," concluded the saying, which the writer attributed to Desmond Tutu. This has been corrected.